Page:Sagas from the Far East; or, Kalmouk and Mongolian traditionary tales.djvu/392

368 degeneracy of later times or to the ignorance of or indifference to Brahmanical peculiarities of the Buddhist tale-repeater; or else his parents were of mixed castes.

In legendary tales Banig is a typical merchant, and the name ultimately came to designate the subdivision of the Vaishja caste, in which trading had become hereditary. The word is derived from pani, which means both to buy and to play games of hazard, and ga, born or descended; hence Banig meant, literally, merchant's son. This designation later became corrupted into Banyan.

It is not possible to learn very much about the merchant's early status, as the subject of trade would naturally seem unworthy of frequent mention in the great epic poems; nevertheless the Ramajana (ii. 83, v. 11) speaks of "the honourable merchants" (naigamâh). Mercantile expeditions, especially by sea, however, partook of the heroic, and as such find a place even in the Mâha Bhârata; and there is a hymn in the Vêda (Rig. V. i. 116, 5) praising Asvin for protecting Bhugju's hundred-oared ship through the immeasurable, fathomless ocean, and bringing it back safely to land.

3. Apes enter frequently not only into the fables but into the epic poetry of India. The Ramajana, narrating the spreading of the Aryan Indians over the south and far-east, speaks of the country as inhabited by apes, and of Rama taking apes for his allies; also, on one occasion, of his re-establishing an ape-king in possession of his previous dominions. Consult Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde, i. 534, 535. Megasthenes mentions various kinds of apes and monkeys, with, however, scarcely recognizable descriptions, in his enumeration of the wild animals of India (Fragm. x. p. 410). Kleitarchos tells that when Alexander had reached a hill in the neighbourhood of the Hydaspes, he came upon a tribe of apes arranged in battle array, looking so formidable that he was about to give the signal for attacking them, but was withheld by the representations of Taxiles, king of the neighbouring country of Taxila, who accompanied him (Fragm. xvi. p. 80). The Pantcha-Tantra contains a fable in which the King of Kamanapura establishes an ape for his bodyguard as more faithful and efficient than man; a thief, however, brings a serpent into the apartment, and at sight of the mortal enemy of his kind, the ape runs away. Another fable of the same collection tells of a Brahman who, having succeeded in rearing a flourishing garden of melons, found them all devoured as soon as ripe by a party of apes, nor was he able by any means to get rid of them. One day he laid himself down hid amid the leafage as if he had been dead, but with a stick in his hand